Acknowledging that “conditions in Germany are very bad”, Herman A. Metz, in an open letter to Samuel Untermyer, warned that “the more the Jews here agitate, the more they irritate those now in power in Germany.”
Mr. Metz, who recently returned from a trip to Germany to observe conditions at first hand, said that he himself was in sympathy with any protest against racial or religious discrimination.
He defended the Hitler regime as having accomplished good in the unification of Germany, and as having “brought within sight a clean-up of intolerable conditions under which it was placed by the Versailles Treaty and the agitation of other countries against them.”
“Unless outside influences tend to aggravate the feeling against the Jews in general owing to local conditions of which the Germans should be the best judges in their own country, things would ease up materially,” said Mr. Metz.
Mr. Metz denied that his connection with the dye and chemical industries influenced his views in any way, saying that at least 80 percent of such products consumed in this country, including those handled by the concerns in which he is interested, are made in the United States.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
